An aspect of the invention relates to the physical design of complex electronic circuit boards. Specifically, an aspect of the invention relates to designing planar circuit boards requiring multiple wiring planes.
The process of designing a new physical circuit board typically starts from scratch: The physical board layout, signal distribution and routing traces are specific to the design under construction and thus need to be individually developed for each new board design. If the new board design is known to comprise electronic functions and components which are identical to functions and components of a previous design, a system designer typically applies a “copy and paste” method on the abstract design level, thus reusing existing schematic design features including the associated wiring. Subsequently, new (product specific) electronic functions and components are added and connected by additional, newly designed schematics. This widely used approach speeds up the electronic circuit board design and reduces the risk of design errors. However, as this design is reduced into a physical design, this typically goes along with modifications and/or additions of wiring traces as well as new via definitions which, as a consequence, may lead to a new definition for the inner-plane assignment. This in turn may result in an altered design which requires additional timing and functional simulation as well as signal integrity simulation in order to ensure and verify the expected electrical and electronic behavior.
Prior art methodologies for generating physical designs of electronic circuit boards typically comprise the steps of                estimating/calculating the required number of wiring planes,        defining a “system wiring strategy”,        defining and calculating the system specific layer stacking,        placing and wiring the components,        carrying out simulations to verify timing and functional behavior as well as signal integrity (and, as a potential consequence, rewiring in order to meet timing and functional specifications),        performing EMC/EMV measurements and tests which may lead to physical design corrections.        
This step-by-step procedure is applied for each new or redesigned physical circuit board design—regardless of whether prior art circuit boards comprising identical or similar functionalities and identical or similar components are available.